Parents as Teachers promotes optimal early development, learning, and health of children by supporting and engaging their parents and caregivers.

Our services for your family include:

• Personal home visits by a certified parent educator to support your parenting role.
• Group Connections to get to know other families through parent/child activities and parenting classes.
• Playgroups where children have the opportunity to play with their parents and other children.
• Child health and development screenings that can identify normal development and/or potential developmental delays.
• Resources in the community based on your family's interests and needs.

Olathe Parents as Teachers is located at 300 E. Loula Street, Olathe, Kansas, 66061. The phone number is 913-780-8106.

I want to thank those of you who took the time to fill out our annual PAT survey for last program year. We really appreciate the feedback, and it helps us to know what we are doing well, and what we can improve on. Thanks to those who gave a shout out to their parent educator and shared some comments about our program!

I wanted to also take this time to address some of the comments of what we can improve on and, hopefully, give you an understanding about how visits are assigned, and what families we can offer home visits to.

PAT is a grant-funded program through Kansas State Department of Education. We are not part of the school finance package, nor are we mandated, and we reapply for our grant every year. The Olathe School District also puts funds to our program, based on our state award. We also have a grant through the United Way of Greater Kansas City, which funds our playroom and toy and book lending library.

PAT has been around for 30 years, and is a parent education program intended for first-time parents with children aged prenatally to 3 years. Some parents asked why they could not have PAT home visits for their second or even third child. The national model is to offer parenting information to those who have not parented before, as well as those meeting some special circumstances. Those circumstances may vary, so we take a look at each enrollment form to determine if a family will receive visits. The national model also suggests a family should be enrolled in PAT for at least two years to receive the maximum benefit from home visits. If you enroll when your child is over 2 years old, we are usually not able to offer home visit to you for this reason. If you have a 3-year-old and a baby, we are usually not able to offer home visits to you. We try to offer a screening home visit to any family whose child is not eligible for visits, and those families are placed on our mailing list and can attend all PAT playgroups and group connections. We also have a waiting list here in Olathe for home visits. We do know the waiting time can vary, and we are sorry we cannot always offer you visits as quickly as we would like. Our parent educators always have full caseloads, and they add new families as soon as others exit from the program.

Some parents asked for more evening and weekend activities. This is a tough one, because our parent educators work hard during the week, and they do all have evening home visits, as well as families of their own. We are trying to offer two Saturday events most months; one is a playgroup and one is a group activity for families. We are going to discuss offering an evening playgroup at our next staff meeting, but this would probably not happen until spring when it doesn’t get dark so early. I would love to hear from you as to what time in the evening you would like to see a playgroup offered, and if you would come to that group!

Lastly, I want all parents to know they can contact me anytime to discuss their home visits, our program, and anything else you’d like to know. I am almost always in my office and can be easily reached via email at dbhiatt@olatheschools.org or by phone, 913-780-7920.

Thank you for being in our program!!  

Dorothy Hiatt

Program Coordinator